In Chapter 6, Dawkins expands on the concept of the selfish gene. The gene isn’t just selfish to preserve itself, it’s selfish to preserve every copy of itself that exists, even if they live inside other survival shells. Certain actions are meant to preserve its copies, like “altruistic” behavior towards relatives. Ideally genes would help every copy of itself out there, but unfortunately genes are not conscious, but some of their survival shells are. The survival shell can’t detect which specific genes are in other people, so it does its best by estimating. The survival shell knows its most likely to find copies of its genes in its kin, so it helps them and thereby the gene helps itself. Of course, the kin an organism saves must share enough of its genes to make it worthwhile. A sibling or child would be worth helping, but a third cousin is not. Dawkins claims that this behavior isn’t a conscious action on behalf of the organism, rather it evolved because it was beneficial for the fate of the gene.
The reason that a mothers “altruism” towards her child is weaker than “altruism” between siblings because a mother knows for sure that the child is hers while siblings could be wrong about their genetic relationship. Dawkins claims that “altruism” evolved because an altruistic child turns into an altruistic parent whose children survive, but a selfish child turns into a selfish parent whose children do not survive. The case of adoption was hard for Dawkins to explain with this theory. Perhaps the child is exploiting the mother. Perhaps the mother is using the child as practice until she has biological children. We are not sure at this point. On the other hand, this theory explains exploitative behaviors, like when cuckoos lay eggs in other birds nest so other birds will raise its young. The cuckoo expends no energy on child rearing while the victim bird wastes efforts on an offspring carries none of its genes.